President Trump said Thursday he never told Michael Cohen to break election laws in 2016, declaring his innocence a day after his former lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison for campaign-finance violations and other crimes.

On Twitter and in an interview with Fox News, the president pushed back aggressively against mounting legal opinion that Cohen’s hush-money payments to two women who allege affairs with Mr. Trump have exposed the president to eventual felony prosecution for directing the lawyer to violate campaign-finance laws.

“I never directed him to do anything wrong,” Mr. Trump told Fox host Harris Faulkner. “Whatever he did, he did on his own. A lawyer who represents a client is supposed to do the right thing. I did nothing wrong.”

Cohen told a federal court that he paid the money to the two women at Mr. Trump’s direction. American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer, also admitted in an immunity deal with prosecutors that it facilitated Cohen’s payouts to porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, saying that “its principal purpose in making the payment was to suppress the woman’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

The president said of the National Enquirer, published by his close friend David Pecker, “I don’t think we made a payment to that tabloid.” Read more

President Trump said Thursday he never told Michael Cohen to break election laws in 2016, declaring his innocence a day after his former lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison for campaign-finance violations and other crimes.

President Trump said Thursday he never told Michael Cohen to break election laws in 2016, declaring his innocence a day after his former lawyer was sentenced to three years in prison for campaign-finance violations and other crimes.

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